Israel Minister of Education Naftali Bennett this week called on the international community to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

Bennett, chairman of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, issued the call on June 9 at the opening of the Herzliya Conference, Israel’s premier defense and diplomatic gathering, hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center-Herzliya. He said Syria’s collapse and the absence of conflict in the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981, justified recognizing Israeli sovereignty.

“Whom should we give the Golan to? To al-Nusra? To al-Qaida?” he asked, referring to terror groups in Syria. “Why do they still not recognize the Golan? What’s the reasoning? If we had listened to the world, we would have given away the Golan, and ISIS would have been on Lake Kinneret.”

Bennett called for Israel to increase the Golan’s Jewish population to 100,000, from about 20,000 today, in the next five years. — jta